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WORK TITLE: Russia’s Dead End
WORK NOTES: trans by Steven I. Levine
PSEUDONYM(S):
BIRTHDATE:
WEBSITE:
CITY: Brussels
STATE:
COUNTRY: Belgium
NATIONALITY: Russian
http://www.rightsinrussia.info/archive/blog/kovalev * https://www.economist.com/news/books-and-arts/21728877-andrei-kovalev-says-things-no-outsider-could-about-russias-megalomania-persecution
RESEARCHER NOTES:
PERSONAL
Male.
ADDRESS
CAREER
Historian, political scientist, and writer. Served as a member of the secretariat of President Mikhail Gorbachev, a member of the Security Council of the Russian Federation, and in the office of the Federal Human Rights Ombudsman Vladmir Lukin; also former staff member of the Institute of USA and Canada of the USSR Academy of Sciences and the Diplomatic Academy.
WRITINGS
Also author of books in Russian, including Mezhdunarodnye otnosheniya (title means “The Crossroads of World Politics”), Moscow, 1983, and A Witness from Behind the Scenes of Russian Politics (in Russian), Ibidem-Verlag (Stuttgart, Germany), 2012. Contributor to Russian journals, including Mezhdunarodnaya zhizn’, Mirovaya ekonomika i mezhdunarodnye otnosheniya, SShA: rkonomika, politika, ideologiya, and Obozrevatel, and to the periodicals Izvestiya, Novaya gazeta, and Komsomolskaya Pravda.
SIDELIGHTS
Andrei Kovalev is a political scientist but was designated a historian in the former the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) where there was no profession of “political scientist.” He served in the administrations of Russian Presidents Mikhail Gorbachev and Vladimir Putin. He later left Russia because he disagreed with Putin’s administration. He later left Russia and served as a staff member of the Institute of USA and Canada of the USSR Academy of Sciences and the Diplomatic Academy. During his time at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in the USSR, Kovalev worked to break down the totalitarian system, from reforming the use of psychiatry and the freeing of political prisoners to pushing through new laws concerning issues such as religious freedom and foreign travel.
A contributor to Russian journals and periodicals, Kovalev is also the author of books in Russian. His first book in English, Russia’s Dead End: An Insider’s Testimony from Gorbachev to Putin, Kovalev draws from his observations working in the former USSR and Russian governments in key positions to discuss what he perceives as troubling truths about his home country. In the process, he provides a behind the scenes look at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Kremlin both prior to and after the dissolution of the USSR in 1991. He also goes back to the time of the Czars in Russia to examine Russia’s dilemmas over the years, from human rights issues to the KGB apparatus and its machinations to state officials’ links to corrupt oligarchs. In the process, he presents a psychoanalyses of Russia. “In his early job in the late 1980s, Kovalev worked on the “elimination of punitive psychiatry,” which has helped him diagnose Russia’s chronic problems,” wrote a Kirkus Reviews contributor.
Kovalev writes in the introduction to Russia’s Dead End: “Russia is sick. Its illness is complex and psychosomatic in character.” Kovalev goes on to later write in the introduction about what he sees as the primary reason why Russia remains a troubled state: “From time immemorial, Russians have been brought up to possess a slave psychology,” adding later: “This mentality is the source of the complete misunderstanding of what democracy is.”
Kovalev provides an historical look at Russia and its incarnation as the former USSR, documenting the fall of the USSR and the subsequent failures of the administrations that have followed. “He paints a convincing first-hand picture of the confusion of the Gorbachev years, the dysfunction of the Boris Yeltsin era and the ebb and flow of KGB influence in the highest reaches of power,” wrote a contributor to the Economist. Kovalev reveals the subsequent burgeoning of state terrorism and propaganda emanating from the Russian government. For example, he includes a comprehensive chart detailing the numerous journalists who have been attack or murdered since 2001.
Much of the book focuses on Putin’s time as head of Russia, noting that even before Putin came to power, the fledgling reforms that Russian underwent after the fall of USSR were basically eliminated during an unsuccessful August 1991 coup to overthrow Gorbachev. According to Kovalev, as a result the “kleptocrats,” rulers who use political power to steal a country’s resources, gained great power. Kovalev is extremely critical of Putin, believing Putin has furthered Russia as a totalitarian state. He writes about how Putin is able to use the Russian nostalgia and ideological dogmatism to remain in power.
Russia’s Dead End “delivers a long-winded answer [as to why Russian policy seeks to retaliate, especially to recover lost territory] , but in so doing he unmasks the Russian body politic in all its Gogol-like grotesquery,” wrote a Publishers Weekly contributor. Benjamin Welton in a review for Foreword Online remarked: “This book is more than a dialogue about democracy versus authoritarianism. It is about the difference between a state that is dependent on its citizens and a state that makes its citizens into dependents.”
BIOCRIT
BOOKS
Kovalev, Andrei A., Russia’s Dead End: An Insider’s Testimony from Gorbachev to Putin, Potomac Books, an imprint of the University of Nebraska Press (Lincoln, NE), 2017.
PERIODICALS
Economist, September 16, 2017, “Insider out; Russia,” review of Russia’s Dead End, p. 78.
Kirkus Reviews, June 1, 2017, review of Russia’s Dead End.
Publishers Weekly, June 5, 2017, review of Russia’s Dead End, p. 45.
ONLINE
Foreword Reviews Online, https://www.forewordreviews.com/ (March 19, 2018), Benjamin Welton, review of Russia’s Dead End.
New York Journal of Books, https://www.nyjournalofbooks.com/ (March 19, 2018), Robert Fantina, review of Russia’s Dead End.
Rights in Russia Website, http://www.rightsinrussia.info/ (April 14, 2018), author profile.
Andrei A. Kovalev is a former member of the secretariat of President Mikhail Gorbachev. He worked in the Soviet and Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs on the staff of the Security Council of the Russian Federation during the Yeltsin and Putin administrations. He is the author of two books in Russian on politics.
Andrei Kovalev is a historian by profession - there was no profession of ‘political scientist’ in the USSR - and a former staff member of the Institute of USA and Canada of the USSR Academy of Sciences and the Diplomatic Academy. He served as a member of the secretariat of President Mikhail Gorbachev, a member of the Security Council of the Russian Federation, and in the office of the Federal Human Rights Ombudsman Vladmir Lukin. During his time at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the USSR, Andrei Kovalev was engaged in what essentially was the work of a dissident: breaking down the totalitarian system through abolishing the repressive use of psychiatry, the freeing of political prisoners, and the ‘pushing through’ of a number of path-breaking laws, including those regulating foreign travel and religious freedom. Andrei Kovalev is the author of France at the Crossroads of World Politics’ [in Russian] (Mezhdunarodnye otnosheniya, Moscow, 1983), A Witness from Behind the Scenes of Russian Politics [in Russian] (Ibidem-Verlag, Stuttgart, 2012) and a number of articles in the journals Mezhdunarodnaya zhizn', Mirovaya ekonomika i mezhdunarodnye otnosheniya, SShA: rkonomika, politika, ideologiya, Obozrevatel, as well as the newspapers Izvestiya, Novaya gazeta, Komsomolskaya Pravda. Convinced of his complete incompatibility with the regime of Vladimir Putin, he has moved to live in Brussels.
Andrei A. Kovalev is a former member of the secretariat of President Mikhail Gorbachev. He worked in the Soviet and Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs on the staff of the Security Council of the Russian Federation during the Yeltsin and Putin administrations. He is the author of two books in Russian on politics. Steven I. Levine, a retired professor of politics and history, is the coauthor of Mao: The Real Story and Arc of Empire: America’s Wars in Asia from the Philippines to Vietnam. Peter Reddaway is professor emeritus of political science and international affairs at George Washington University and the author of books on politics and human rights in the Soviet and post-Soviet eras.
Quotes from book, pgs. 9 + 14
Kovalev, Andrei A.: RUSSIA'S DEAD END
Kirkus Reviews. (June 1, 2017):
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2017 Kirkus Media LLC
http://www.kirkusreviews.com/
Full Text:
Kovalev, Andrei A. RUSSIA'S DEAD END Potomac Books (Adult Nonfiction) $34.95 8, 1 ISBN: 978-1-61234-893-3
Why will democracy refuse to take root in Russia?In this trenchant expose of Russia's totalitarian pathology, Kovalev--who was a member of Mikhail Gorbachev's secretariat and also worked in the foreign affairs ministry under Boris Yeltsin and Vladimir Putin--blames the country's enduring "slave psychology" for many of its ills, from the time of the czars to the present. The author, whose high-level career took him into the apogee of government power and whose own father was an eminent Soviet diplomat, approaches the unending Russian cycle of tear-down, reaction, revanchism, and stagnation like a social psychologist. In his early job in the late 1980s, Kovalev worked on the "elimination of punitive psychiatry," which has helped him diagnose Russia's chronic problems. Perhaps his current exile in Belgium--he found the Putin regime to be too politically oppressive," and he includes a horrifying chart delineating the attacks on and murders of journalists and editors since 2001--has allowed him the freedom to skewer the unchecked power of the "secret services," which took on new life after the failed 1991 coup against Gorbachev. Kovalev methodically works through the stages of this failed coup as reflections of the same "monster" of totalitarianism that the liberal reforms of Gorbachev were supposed to eliminate. Under Yeltsin, a "new elite" formed (really just a replica of the old elite), assuming new powers under former KGB chief Putin, whose apotheosis demonstrated that the Russian population could still be manipulated into "subordinat[ing] its own real interests to the sham interests of the state." Moreover, Putin capitalizes on the Russian sense of nostalgia for the strong-armed leader who reverts to the familiar ideological dogmatism, sounding the hollow notes of the "National Idea"--i.e., patriotism, Russian Orthodoxy, suspicion of mysterious "interventionists," need for secrecy, renewed imperialism, infantilism, xenophobia, and so on. Ultimately, Kovalev brings us back to the totalitarian state that won't go away. Too dense and scholarly for some general readers but astonishing in its relentless frankness and a refreshing report from an insider.
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"Kovalev, Andrei A.: RUSSIA'S DEAD END." Kirkus Reviews, 1 June 2017. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A493329225/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=b27009ae. Accessed 19 Mar. 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A493329225
Insider out; Russia
The Economist. 424.9058 (Sept. 16, 2017): p78(US).
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2017 Economist Intelligence Unit N.A. Incorporated
http://store.eiu.com/
Full Text:
HIDDEN within the Soviet system were able, conscientious officials who were appalled by the crimes and lies they were asked to defend. One of them was Andrei Kovalev, a diplomat who under Mikhail Gorbachev helped dismantle some of the worst abuses of what he freely accepts was an evil empire. Now living in western Europe, Mr Kovalev is a piercing critic of Vladimir Putin's misrule of Russia.
His sizzling memoir, which was first published in a two-volume Russian edition in 2012, is an unsparing account of the Soviet collapse, and of the hardliners' revenge that followed. It is now available in a condensed and edited version, translated by Steven Levine, a professor at the University of Montana.
The central argument of the book is that Russia has returned to the dangerous stagnation of the 1980s, largely thanks to the resurgence of the old KGB. The authoritarian squeeze will worsen at home, Mr Kovalev predicts, while foreign policy will become increasingly hostile and unpredictable. In the long run he fears a break-up of Russia, before--possibly--the dawn of democracy, the rule of law and modernisation.
His language is strikingly blunt. Mr Putin is a "mumbling, stammering knock-kneed brow-furrowing ex-KGB agent who speaks the language of the gutter and values power above everything". Echoing Alexander Herzen, a 19th-century emigre who declared Russia to be suffering from "patriotic syphilis", Mr Kovalev diagnoses in his country "manic-depressive psychosis…acute megalomania, persecution complex and kleptomania". Foreigners who write like this are accused of Russophobia. But it is hard to bring that charge against the erudite Mr Kovalev, with his long and distinguished public service.
He paints a convincing first-hand picture of the confusion of the Gorbachev years, the dysfunction of the Boris Yeltsin era and the ebb and flow of KGB influence in the highest reaches of power. Mr Kovalev's finest hour was ending the practice of coercive psychiatry. As a senior diplomat dealing with human rights, he brought the power of the reformist foreign ministry to bear on the secretive health ministry, which flatly denied that any abuse was taking place. He also pioneered reforms to improve religious freedom. This involved dispiriting meetings with the leaders of the Russian Orthodox church, in which he noted their unpleasant views, worldly lifestyle and terror of competition.
Some may find that the book has a conspiratorial tinge. The botched 1991 coup which led to the break-up of the Soviet Union, he argues, was not the defeat for hardliners it appeared. It allowed them to make a break with the failures of the past, clearing the way for their return to power and wealth. But the evidence he adduces is thought-provoking.
Mr Kovalev chides American and European leaders for their naivety towards Yeltsin's administration, in which hardliners soon gained a fatal grip, and their indulgence of the current regime, whose foreign policy he compares to Hitler's. His main message is grim: Russia, as never before, is a danger to itself and those around it.
Russia's Dead End: An Insider's Testimony from Gorbachev to Putin.
By Andrei Kovalev. Translated by Steven Levine.
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"Insider out; Russia." The Economist, 16 Sept. 2017, p. 78(US). General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A504510617/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=c39f9747. Accessed 19 Mar. 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A504510617
Russia's Dead End: An Insider's Testimony from Gorbachev to Putin
Publishers Weekly. 264.23 (June 5, 2017): p45.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2017 PWxyz, LLC
http://www.publishersweekly.com/
Full Text:
Russia's Dead End: An Insider's Testimony from Gorbachev to Putin Andrei A. Kovalev, trans, from the Russian by Steven I. Levine. Potomac, $34.95 (392p) ISBN 978-1-61234-893-3
Kovalev, a career bureaucrat in the Soviet and Russian foreign ministry, dampens hope for democratic reform in this behind-the-Kremlin Wall account. He begins with the Gorbachev years, during which Kovalev believes that Russia had its first--and last--chance for real change. Kovalev tells how fledgling reforms were trampled in 1991 during the August coup, which he suggests was the brainchild of the KGB, and which paved the way for the "kleptokrats." He goes on to call Putin's policies "madness." (Kovalev immigrated to Belgium in 2007 due to Putin's oppressiveness.) The book's tone is shrill, its message dire. Russia is "a disintegrating ecological and chemical time bomb," Kovalev writes, and he accuses Putin of fostering a new Russian imperialism characterized by infantilism, aggression, cruelty, and xenophobia. Readers may tire quickly of Kovalev's ranting, rendered faithfully in translation, but he gets the details right. Stressing that perestroika got off to a bad start (an antivodka campaign soured many Russians on Western-style democracy), Kovalev examines why perestroika failed and revanchism become foreign policy. Kovalev delivers a long-winded answer, but in so doing he unmasks the Russian body politic in all its Gogol-like grotesquery. Agent: Peter Bernstein, Bernstein Literary. (Aug.)
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"Russia's Dead End: An Insider's Testimony from Gorbachev to Putin." Publishers Weekly, 5 June 2017, p. 45. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A495538366/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=55bdb5c5. Accessed 19 Mar. 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A495538366
RUSSIA'S DEAD END
AN INSIDER'S TESTIMONY FROM GORBACHEV TO PUTIN
Andrei A. Kovalev
Steven I. Levine (Translator)
Potomac Books (Aug 1, 2017)
Hardcover $34.95 (392pp)
978-1-61234-893-3
Told with a clear eye and an articulate pen, Russia’s Dead End is an honest look at a great nation that continues to suffer under a barbaric regime.
Winston Churchill once described the Soviet Union as a “riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma,” and the fall of the USSR did not make the situation any clearer. Andrei A. Kovalev highlights why Russia remains stuck in neutral in Russia’s Dead End.
Although Kovalev has a PhD in history, his is not the perspective of a detached academic. Kovalev’s father, Anatoly, was a liberal poet and foreign-policy official who belonged to the inner circle of Soviet leaders. As Russia’s Dead End recounts, the Kovalev household received the news of President John F. Kennedy’s assassination long before the rest of Moscow.
Thanks to the endemic corruption and reactionary tendencies of post-Soviet leaders Boris Yeltsin and Vladimir Putin, Russia has maintained its status as a neocolonial power. It has pursued military adventurism abroad, in Afghanistan, Tajikistan, Chechnya, Georgia, and Ukraine, in order to facilitate state-sponsored gangsterism at home.
As Kovalev sees it, the Bolsheviks, who are spiritually and intellectually empty, never lost power in Moscow. Sure, Marxism-Leninism no longer holds sway over Russia’s “slave” masses, but the new Bolshevists inside the state security complex refuse to relinquish their highly abusive power.
Russia’s Dead End should be required reading for all American students interested in joining an intelligence service or a foreign-policy agency. Kovalev’s well-written and incisive book dispels several common myths about the world’s great Eurasian power.
First and foremost, Russia’s embrace of parliamentary democracy did not signal the end of the long intellectual war between capitalism and communism. Rather, as Kovalev shows, Russia’s new czars simply kept the Soviet apparatus and its apparatchiks in place. He argues that the West’s weakness toward Moscow has allowed Putin, an authoritarian strongman, the space to continue to exploit Russian citizens as was done to the serfs of old.
Told with a clear eye and an articulate pen, Russia’s Dead End is an honest look at a great nation that continues to suffer under a barbaric regime. This book is more than a dialogue about democracy versus authoritarianism. It is about the difference between a state that is dependent on its citizens and a state that makes its citizens into dependents.
Reviewed by Benjamin Welton
July/August 2017
Russia's Dead End: An Insider's Testimony from Gorbachev to Putin
Image of Russia's Dead End: An Insider's Testimony from Gorbachev to Putin
Author(s):
Andrei A. Kovalev
Peter Reddaway
Translator(s):
Steven I. Levine
Release Date:
July 31, 2017
Publisher/Imprint:
Potomac Books
Pages:
392
Buy on Amazon
Reviewed by:
Robert Fantina
“ Whether one is pro- or anti-Russia, or supports or disdains Putin, this book will be a fascinating read.”
With Congress carefully watching the investigation into possible Russian interference in the 2016 United States presidential election, the international focus on Russia is strong. Andrei A. Kovalev’s book Russia’s Dead End couldn’t be timelier.
Kovalev is a former insider, having served during the final years of the Soviet Union in the USSR Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and later in other prominent roles in Russia. He was a close associate of Mikhail Gorbachev, bringing him into close proximity with Soviet power brokers, right up through the end of the Soviet Union, and the beginnings of Glasnost, the fledgling effort to bring democracy to Russia.
In his insider, no-holds-barred description of what happened, the author chronicles in detail the political maneuverings, missteps, betrayals, manipulations, and intrigues that were not obvious in the West, or even to Russian citizens themselves.
Changes in governmental policies that had a direct bearing on the citizens often only occurred after much internecine battling behind the scenes of what had been one of the most secretive governments in the world. Those who had long held power in the Soviet Union were not willing to surrender it in Gorbachev’s new Russia.
The difficult adjustment that Gorbachev attempted to negotiate for his country is described in detail, providing the reader with an enthralling ride through one of modern geo-political history’s most tumultuous events. His support for change was muted: “The only ones to support Gorbachev’s reforms were liberal Soviet intellectuals and other dissenters who were then able to say and write what they pleased.”
This limited group was in opposition to many in government positions who had held power for decades. “The overwhelming majority of the peoples of the USSR were committed Communists of the Stalinist-Leninist school who either did not believe that abuses of power occurred, or worse, actively supported such abuses by engaging in denunciations and other inhumane behavior.”
The names are not withheld; there is no “protecting of the innocent,” mainly, it seems, because Kovalev doesn’t see many innocents. He names names, focusing finally on current Russian President Vladimir Putin, of whom he is no fan.
The author laments what he sees as Russia’s failed experiment in democracy; it was a nation, he suggests, that could have achieved much by now, but was anchored in the mire of past mistakes, and an Old Guard unwilling to change. He details where decisions that could have helped achieve noble goals were instead made to maintain people in their positions of power.
Lessons for the U.S. in this book are clear. In Russia, “A rather narrow but powerful circle of ideologues vanquished history and established a monopoly over historical ‘truth’ or, more accurately, ‘pseudo truth.’” The “alternate facts” of the Trump Administration, and his contempt for what he calls “fake news,” appear to have precedence in Russian history.
There are, today, many interpretations of Russia’s agenda as a player on the world stage. With the U.S. government in disarray under the stumbling leadership of Donald Trump, and with Trump’s history with Putin being closely scrutinized, Russia’s Dead End will make interesting reading for anyone seeking additional insights into that nation and its recent history. Whether one is pro- or anti-Russia, or supports or disdains Putin, this book will be a fascinating read.
Robert Fantina is the author of Empire, Racism and Genocide: A History of U.S. Foreign Policy. His articles on foreign Policy, most frequently concerning Israel and Palestine, have appeared in such venues as Counterpunch and WarIsaCrime.org.